Recordings that you enjoy: Beethoven Symphony #9

Started by Gurn Blanston, April 26, 2009, 08:39:39 AM

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Bogey

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 12, 2014, 07:06:30 AM


PS: Bill,
How did that go? I don't have a Horenstein, there are a couple of them out there and I have been mulling it. Worth dropping a dime?

8)

Well, and probably unfairly, I wait for Presto--Allegro assai before I rate.  If that ain't happening, IT ain't happening for me.  My impressions:

a. Some nice underpinnings of oboe at the start of the 4th.  "Gotta" listen for them though.
b. Otto Weiner's bass is very nice.  He does not try to do too much and keeps it very even.
c. Wilma Lipp's soprano is a bit much.  Something out of Young Frankenstein, but she settles down and the rest is fine.
d. The chorus is excellent, but the recording does not draw them to the front enough at points. 

Overall, though, a good purchase and a 9th that I will come back to.
There will never be another era like the Golden Age of Hollywood.  We didn't know how to blow up buildings then so we had no choice but to tell great stories with great characters.-Ben Mankiewicz

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: Bogey on October 12, 2014, 07:59:14 AM
Well, and probably unfairly, I wait for Presto--Allegro assai before I rate.  If that ain't happening, IT ain't happening for me.  My impressions:

a. Some nice underpinnings of oboe at the start of the 4th.  "Gotta" listen for them though.
b. Otto Weiner's bass is very nice.  He does not try to do too much and keeps it very even.
c. Wilma Lipp's soprano is a bit much.  Something out of Young Frankenstein, but she settles down and the rest is fine.
d. The chorus is excellent, but the recording does not draw them to the front enough at points. 

Overall, though, a good purchase and a 9th that I will come back to.

Ah, very good, you hit the points I can relate to. With many of those older recordings, I have (unfairly) dinged the singers when it was really the recordings themselves, that was as good as they could sound. There is another Horenstein somewhere I have seen, I think it is from the very early 1960's, and sound shouldn't be an issue with it. As long as the tempos are reasonable (at 65 minutes it would seem they are) I might enjoy that one soon. :)

8)
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Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Gurn Blanston

Bill,
I just went ahead and got this one, it is the one I have been looking at, although I don't know much about it I hope when it arrives next week I will. You can never tell with these labels! One reviewer said the sound is excellent on it, a miracle of remastering, so it seems. :)



I have other VSO recordings which are always well played.

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Bogey

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 12, 2014, 08:16:31 AM
Bill,
I just went ahead and got this one, it is the one I have been looking at, although I don't know much about it I hope when it arrives next week I will. You can never tell with these labels! One reviewer said the sound is excellent on it, a miracle of remastering, so it seems. :)



I have other VSO recordings which are always well played.

8)

Is this one from the 60's?
There will never be another era like the Golden Age of Hollywood.  We didn't know how to blow up buildings then so we had no choice but to tell great stories with great characters.-Ben Mankiewicz

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: Bogey on October 12, 2014, 10:24:33 AM
Is this one from the 60's?

I think it is but I won't be sure till I have it in my hands. I thought it was someone here who first mentioned there was one from the early '60's and I was basing off that...  :-\

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Bogey

#745
Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 12, 2014, 11:28:43 AM
I think it is but I won't be sure till I have it in my hands. I thought it was someone here who first mentioned there was one from the early '60's and I was basing off that...  :-\

8)

Same line up as the one I have from '56:

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=74413

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=10863

There is a '61 out there.

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=90199
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=469008
There will never be another era like the Golden Age of Hollywood.  We didn't know how to blow up buildings then so we had no choice but to tell great stories with great characters.-Ben Mankiewicz

Gurn Blanston

Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Bogey

There will never be another era like the Golden Age of Hollywood.  We didn't know how to blow up buildings then so we had no choice but to tell great stories with great characters.-Ben Mankiewicz

Leo K.

#748
Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 12, 2014, 08:16:31 AM
Bill,
I just went ahead and got this one, it is the one I have been looking at, although I don't know much about it I hope when it arrives next week I will. You can never tell with these labels! One reviewer said the sound is excellent on it, a miracle of remastering, so it seems. :)



I have other VSO recordings which are always well played.

8)

I have fond memories of listening to this one in the late '80's when I first listened to the 9th, it's one of my imprint recordings of Beethoven's 9 :) I'm a big fan of Horenstein.

I also have the 1961 mentioned but havent listened to that box set yet.

kishnevi

That Kubelik piqued my interest. Ordered it just now.

Dates from 1958, btw.

kishnevi

Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on October 12, 2014, 06:47:08 PM
That Kubelik piqued my interest. Ordered it just now.

Dates from 1958, btw.

Received today and played tonight.
Ultimately a curiousity.  Recorded in mono at a concert celebrating the 10th anniversary of Israel's independence.  Recording glitch early in the first movement but otherwise tolerable sonics.  Sung in Hebrew, but if I had not known this beforehand, I could have easily thought this was sung in a Slavic language.  Hebrew I suppose did not fit well onto Beethoven's musical lines and I only recognized a few words here and there.

Pat B

Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on October 17, 2014, 06:39:07 PM
Received today and played tonight.
Ultimately a curiousity.  Recorded in mono at a concert celebrating the 10th anniversary of Israel's independence.  Recording glitch early in the first movement but otherwise tolerable sonics.  Sung in Hebrew, but if I had not known this beforehand, I could have easily thought this was sung in a Slavic language.  Hebrew I suppose did not fit well onto Beethoven's musical lines and I only recognized a few words here and there.

Very helpful, thanks for posting that.

Gurn Blanston

Very interesting, Jeffrey. Not sure what to make of it; good old 9th or oddball curiosity. :)

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

kishnevi

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 17, 2014, 07:02:47 PM
Very interesting, Jeffrey. Not sure what to make of it; good old 9th or oddball curiosity. :)

8)

As a simple performance, it was well done. Total time was 65:23.  But the recording glitch and the nonGerman text mean it would never be A Contender.

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on October 17, 2014, 07:06:39 PM
As a simple performance, it was well done. Total time was 65:23.  But the recording glitch and the nonGerman text mean it would never be A Contender.

The recording glitch bothers me a lot more than the language though. I hate when that happens. I have some pretty good old performances that I rarely listen to because of the quality of the sonics. I'm willing to make allowances for age and all that, but that's for one or two listenings only. Probably the real reason I confine my regular listening to the post-mono age.  :-\  Still, that is an oddity....

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Bogey

#755
Rolled out this one today:



Well, the first three movements were very nice.... I expected no less from Cleveland.  Even the start of the Presto kept me thumping along.. Then things quickly got ugly.  When the singers took off together I thought I was listening to a chaotic "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" round.  The chorus was solid and deep, but even they could not save this effort.  But hey, we've got Dohnányi and Szell, so no worries kicking the Ohio thing.
There will never be another era like the Golden Age of Hollywood.  We didn't know how to blow up buildings then so we had no choice but to tell great stories with great characters.-Ben Mankiewicz

RebLem

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 17, 2014, 07:12:55 PM
The recording glitch bothers me a lot more than the language though. I hate when that happens. I have some pretty good old performances that I rarely listen to because of the quality of the sonics. I'm willing to make allowances for age and all that, but that's for one or two listenings only. Probably the real reason I confine my regular listening to the post-mono age.  :-\  Still, that is an oddity.... 8)
I generally am not that strict.  But I do generally restrict myself to the LP era.  Exceptions are some Strauss recordings--esp that Mozart CD from 1926, I think it was, the incredibly great 1938 Bruno Walter Mahler 9th with the VPO, some old Mengelberg performances, and, of course, Furtwangler (I have six Furtwangler recordings of the Beethoven 9th, for example)--and the big RCA Toscanini box, which has many performances from the pre-LP era.  I have some CDs with incredible gaps in them of marvelous music--mostly Fritz Busch Mozart operas from Glyndebourne in the mid-1930's, that are still worth listening to once, twice, or three times.  Another one some people like but that doesn't appeal to me is the Casals, Szell, Czech Phil. recording of the Dvorak Cello Concerto.  My favorite Dvorak concerto, though is Rostropovich's very first one from 1951 with Vaclav Talich and the Czech Phil.  Everyone should get that one! 
"Don't drink and drive; you might spill it."--J. Eugene Baker, aka my late father.

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: RebLem on October 20, 2014, 05:57:57 AM
I generally am not that strict.  But I do generally restrict myself to the LP era.  Exceptions are some Strauss recordings--esp that Mozart CD from 1926, I think it was, the incredibly great 1938 Bruno Walter Mahler 9th with the VPO, some old Mengelberg performances, and, of course, Furtwangler (I have six Furtwangler recordings of the Beethoven 9th, for example)--and the big RCA Toscanini box, which has many performances from the pre-LP era.  I have some CDs with incredible gaps in them of marvelous music--mostly Fritz Busch Mozart operas from Glyndebourne in the mid-1930's, that are still worth listening to once, twice, or three times.  Another one some people like but that doesn't appeal to me is the Casals, Szell, Czech Phil. recording of the Dvorak Cello Concerto.  My favorite Dvorak concerto, though is Rostropovich's very first one from 1951 with Vaclav Talich and the Czech Phil.  Everyone should get that one!

Oh, I'll listen to anything once, I'm just very reluctant to make an investment in something I know already I will only listen to once! On the topic of 9ths, I have a1928 Oskar Fried recording, for example, which is a must have historically, and a Felix Weingärtner from 1937 which is also pretty interesting. However, I also have a Brahms Piano Quartet & Quintet disk by the Busch Quartet w/Rudolf Serkin from 1938 which has incredibly good sound and is my favorite recording! So hard and fast rules don't work too well, but in the main, I'm quite unhappy with earlier recordings, both for the sonics and for the performance style (usually). :)

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

RebLem

Quote from: Bogey on October 12, 2014, 07:59:14 AM
Well, and probably unfairly, I wait for Presto--Allegro assai before I rate.  If that ain't happening, IT ain't happening for me.  My impressions:

a. Some nice underpinnings of oboe at the start of the 4th.  "Gotta" listen for them though.
b. Otto Weiner's bass is very nice.  He does not try to do too much and keeps it very even.
c. Wilma Lipp's soprano is a bit much.  Something out of Young Frankenstein, but she settles down and the rest is fine.
d. The chorus is excellent, but the recording does not draw them to the front enough at points. 

Overall, though, a good purchase and a 9th that I will come back to.
Now, that bit about Wilma Lipp is interesting.  She is also the soprano in the Carl Schuricht account of the Ninth, and one of the reasons why his Ninth is the only so-so performance in his set.  The rest are superb.
"Don't drink and drive; you might spill it."--J. Eugene Baker, aka my late father.

Daverz

Last one I enjoyed was Fricsay:

[asin]B000056TKC[/asin]

Sound is only OK stereo, but it never got in the way of enjoying the music.